That was actually one of the points I didn't much agree with. "Pretend you're a puppet and let it slide by..." Okay, Joel, let's see how well you do when the customer indulges in profanity and ad hominem attacks.

That, but then there's that first lady from your link. She didn't want to fly Southwest. She wanted to fly Delta at Southwest's prices. Ain't gonna happen, and everytime she gets on a Southwest plane, and it's not Delta, she's going to be pissed.

That's being an asshole.

We have clients who get pissed and think they're getting poor service when they're late for their appointment and have to reschedule. They think they should be seen anyway and screw scheduling and other clients. That is also being an asshole.

I haven't had the kind of nasty customers I had with Microsoft, but it's amazing how hearing "I'm allowed to hang up on you if you keep talking like that" calms some folks right down.

Wrong thread.

Ooooh!

It is also being an asshole when you think that your car problems are more important that someone else's car problems simply because you spent triple what the other person spent. Even if all you want is an oil change, and the other car needs the transmission replaced.

The way I've learned to deal with the truly abusive customers -- the ones who shout obscenities and throw shit at you and basically flip out like unreasonably infuriated mammals -- is to smile, to oh-so-helpfully give them what they want, and while doing so, to think to myself, "Wouldn't it be funny if this customer had a heart attack right now, and died over something so stupid and pointless?"

One must placate the Asshole Inside.

It's also amusing to have the customer who says, "Your program is horrible, everyone says so, we wouldn't use it if we weren't forced to," especially when he's bracketed by people who say, "You guys have the coolest program, I just love it."

I've been known to lecture people I've called for help about proper customer support responses. It's got to be annoying. OTOH, I'm sure they'd rather hear that than me telling them where to shove their head. Which I guess I'm doing, but I'm doing is cloaked in a helpful tip! Or something.

I get frustrated with users, I think some of them are assholes some times, but they never know that. Which is as it should be.

Thing is? A lot of times I can't give them what they want, as in am prohibited by laws. Usually though, when the nastiness starts, I transfer 'em to my boss. Of course then if boss doesn't answer, they call right back with, "YOU JUST TRANSFERRED ME TO A VOICEMAIL YOU BITCH!!"

Once when i was a kid working at a Blockbuster, I had a mental customer call me up to say she had a movie put on hold and was it still there?

I said we dont hold movies. (We got a huge lecture about that the week before)

She went completely insane and said she was coming to talk to the manager. There was a lot of yelling and questioning of my intelligence.

I told her I'd check to see if the movie was on the shelf, put her on hold, and asked a customer who was in line if she would like a free movie.

Grabbed it, rented it out to her on my dime, went back to the phone and could honestly say that the movie wasn't available.

It felt good.

There was an interesting bit about Stephen Fry in the New Yorker this past summer, about a play he was in (several years ago) and how suddenly, in the middle of the play, he came down with a case of stage fright so crippling he has enver bperformed live on stage since. The writer went out and interviewed all sorts of actors and had them talk about their exhilaration/fear right before stepping onto the stage, and not a one of them denied it was sometimes just blank fear.